IT BREAKS MY HEART
Ephesians 4:1-7, 11-16

A sermon given by the Rev. Richard H. Taylor
July 24, 2005 / 10th Sunday of Pentecost

Permit me if you will this morning, a certain amount of personal reflection.

When I was young, and deciding to be a minister, one of the things that most influenced my choices was a love for ecumenism, a love for church unity and cooperation.

Some of you know the story of how I had been attending a fundamentalist church in my neighborhood. While the people there had been kind to me, they took us on a mission trip, where the missionary pastor of their denomination said they were the only true church. He specifically denounced Congregationalists as not believing in God. Since many of my family had belonged to a Congregational Church, I felt his hard words falling on my family.

About the same time (1957), the United Church of Christ was formed. I saw the first General Synod on the television. I thought, "isn't that great!"I decided on my own to start going back to the downtown Congregational Church where my family had belonged, and be part of this movement for Christians of various backgrounds to get along better.

As part of my decision to become a minister I wrote and memorized certain prayers. The language was rather immature. Yet I have continued to say them every day, partly as a memory of my youthful inspirations. One line of the prayers was “help me to go forth and work for thy one united and everlasting church.”

When, still a teenager, I was given my first opportunity to preach, I chose today’s Ephesians text: “One Lord, one faith, one baptism.” I wanted to stress how Christians are one, how we should get along.

My first letter to the editor of a national magazine that ever got published, I wrote when I was about 17. I sent it to the old United Church Herald. It expressed my opposition to the United Church of Christ’s opposition to the National Association of Congregational Christian Churches’ application for membership in the old International Congregational Council.

I really wanted everyone to get along.

I can remember cringing in sadness when I heard that churches had become so upset as to withdraw from the denomination.

But everyone in the church getting along became more difficult as I came to be more certain that I was gay. In the late fifties and early sixties gay was not included in this list of people welcome in churches. So, in pursuit of everyone getting along, I learned how to be celibate. I also learned how to be quiet and not talk about myself. True, this meant that I ended up lowering my head and withdrawing from conversations. It meant I channeled feelings and energies into inappropriate places. It meant I shut down part of my personhood. But I thought it would help people get along, and we’d have unity.

But it was not easy.

I remember one Sunday in one of my former churches when a member of the pulpit committee who had called me to that Church came into my office before the worship service. I thought of him as a friend. On his way to church he had heard some religious news item on the radio. He launched into a tirade. “It’s terrible what these gay people are doing to the Church. They are just destroying churches everywhere. What we need to do is drive them all out of the church!” How could I reply to that? I asked myself what I had done to the church that was so terrible that I should be driven out?

That wasn't the only such incident. I actually met many clergy, often in our denomination, who said "anyone who thinks or feels that way should not be a minister." It wasn't a matter of what you did, but merely your feelings. I thought I hadn't determined my feelings, they just were. And I had used up so much energy and effort to not act on my feelings, and I still should be driven from the Church!

But honestly, those encounters did not encourage me to change. They just caused me to more securely lock the door.

It was only, actually, when I heard the stories of other GLBT people that I began to open up and tell the truth. Some of these were stories told by parishioners to their pastor. When I saw how much other individuals and families were suffering, I thought this needs to stop. And, thank God, I also heard the voice and met people in my own denomination that were affirming, gentle, and caring.

To others whose stories I had heard, and eventually to myself, the announcement of openness and affirmation was a great kindness and help.

But then, what about my desire for unity?

Churches were withdrawing right and left from the United Church because we welcomed people. Some religious leaders in other denominations have labeled us a cult or a sect. People are angry. They have been so angry that many a church has been pulled apart. And then they even burn and vandalize churches.

And all the news media proclaim that the churches of America are breaking apart, all of them are fighting, and the reason is people like me. If it wasn't for people like me, the Church would be getting along.

How does that make me feel? Honestly, it breaks my heart. It breaks my heart that there is so much fighting, name calling, division in the churches.

The official seal of the United Church of Christ still shows as our motto the words of Jesus, “that they may all be one.” But despite that motto I think we have had to find a new and more prophetic understanding of ourselves. We are a justice seeking church. We want to end oppression. When people are hurting we can not turn away or keep quiet. The justice and desire of God won’t allow it. The inclusiveness of God won’t allow it.

But here we are, this Church that was brought together with the hope that we all might be one, that we could all get along; and now we are considered the rabble rousers, the noise makers, the malcontents that have disrupted the unity of the Church.

And I mean it when I say that the divisiveness still breaks my heart.

But I have also had to wonder, how did we get here? How did the Church that wanted unity become the Church that is now almost cast out of the family?

I think it is because of something in the psyche, in the essence, in the marrow of what it means to be ecumenical, in what it means to try to get along.

When we pursued merger we said that love was essential. When we pursued merger we said that the acceptance of people with differing cultures, and differing experiences, and different ways of doing things was essential. While we saw a oneness in the God revealed to us in Jesus Christ, we saw that that God created a kaleidoscope.

Different worship styles, different cultural traditions, different ways of organization, different colors of skin could not end our essential unity and love for each other.

So our openness and affirmation continue that tolerance, continue that acceptance, continue that love. We were perhaps more sensitive to the experiences and stories of others, precisely because we had gone through the ecumenical process, precisely because we decided to listen to others, and to accept more than one read on each detail.

I think that’s how we ended up where we are.

All the hating, all the fighting, it still breaks my heart. But maybe just now we are opening ears to hear to listen. And maybe – even if beyond our time, the great reunion of understanding and acceptance will take place; and God may have seen fit to use us to engage others in the process of listening and love.

May such a word bind up our broken hearts.

Amen.